GALLAGHER'S WORD

Hope you're enjoying Capital One Bowl Week (or month, whatever). Chances are you might've caught the end of the New Mexico Bowl that actually had an exciting end last Saturday. On the smurf turf in Boise, the Aggies of Utah State wiped the floor with Toledo. The Poinsettia Bowl had BYU's defense taking down the San Diego State offense in Ron Burgandy's backyard. Tonight, red hot Ball State is getting owned by Central Florida in the Beef O'Brady's Bowl. Let me stop right there. How many of these first four bowl games have you been able to get into and watch in their entirety? The answer is most likely one or zero. The ones who have watched one full game probably had a horse in the race.

I get the whole money aspect of bowl games. Put more green in the pockets of the universities and football conferences. But much like my feelings towards Thursday Night Football in the NFL, is it overkill for the FBS with these bowl games?

Many years ago, you had fewer bowl games and most of the major ones were played on New Years Day. The BBVA Compass Bowl and GoDaddy.com Bowl games were not played within 48 hours of the national championship game. 35 games is overkill. It's bad enough the names change due to corporate sponsorship. The Peach Bowl is now the Chik-Fil-A Bowl and the Gator Bowl has TaxSlayer.com in front of it. Waiting for the year when it's the ProFlowers.com Rose Bowl Game.It has turned into 6-6 schools playing other 6-6 schools in front of half empty stadiums. ESPN is milking the bowl game cow by airing almost every game. If they could air the Cotton Bowl and Sun Bowl, they would.

We're not going to care about these bowl games until we're watching the ball drop, drunk on New Years Eve. The tradition of watching the Rose Bowl as your hangover cure is back after the "no play on Sunday" in 2011.

Don't get me wrong, there are some good games leading up to that first of January showcase. It's just too much at the end of the day. New Years Day features a lot of great games, including two BCS bowls. Of course, we are all anticipating that Pitt-Ole Miss Compass Bowl game right before Alabama takes on Notre Dame for the national championship, right? Maybe I'm being a Scrooge when it comes to bowl games. Along with the overload of consumerism of Christmas at time, college football has jumped on that bandwagon as well. Maybe this will make sense in 2014 when there will be three game that truly matter.